The Tayrea Study
by suddenlyallatonce
Summary: A bunch of random stuff about Taylor and Andrea's history and relationship.
1. Chapter 1 - Taylor Bennett

Taylor Bennett. Brummie. East Ender. Chav.

Nobody knew who her father was. Not Taylor. Not her mother. But it didn't matter, did it? In Taylor's opinion, dads sucked.

Her mother, though, was a nineteen year-old girl called Sharon who'd been kicked out of her parents' house once they found out she was pregnant. Taylor never much cared for her mother. At least, she didn't think so.

For a year or so, the two girls just about survived in a dodgy apartment building in a rough area of Birmingham. Then Sharon met this guy, Dave, who she quickly moved in with. They had twin boys, Ethan and Nathan. Taylor didn't much like Dave either, even though she was only a young child when she lived with him. Dave cleared off fairly quickly. He went off on a "business trip" and never returned.

Things only went downhill from there. Sharon got into drugs when Taylor was about six. They almost starved. They got put into social services and got transferred up to East London, which was only slightly better than Birmingham.

Ethan and Nathan were adopted almost immediately, with their big sad eyes and innocent faces. Nobody spared Taylor a second chance.

By the time she was ten, she had given up with life. Nobody wanted to adopt a ten year-old, everyone knew that.

But her bitch of a social worker actually did something good in the end. She found a school, called St Trinians. "It takes unwanted rejects like you," the woman, Tracey, had told her. And Taylor had jumped at the chance to get out of the care home.

It was the best thing that ever happened to her.


	2. Chapter 2 - Andrea James

Andrea James lived in Westminster. And no, she wasn't posh, or rich. She was reminded of that fact every day.

She lived in a small rented house with her single dad. Her mother had died in childbirth. There wasn't much money, but they did alright. Her dad was working the way up the ladder in the factory he was working at, forever telling her about another promotion he had.

In the typical snotty rich Westminster girl fashion, she attended an expensive private school. But that was only because she was intelligent and determined enough to work for a scholarship there, even as a child.

It was horrible at school. The girls didn't like her - her clothes were too cheap and tatty, her fashion choices were too alternative, she didn't have an affected, snotty accent. She was everything that they despised, and they took pleasure in abusing her. Verbally, of course. Andrea was the best fighter in the school. She could break their necks easily. Not that she ever thought about that…

Even the teachers hated her. She was smarter than most of the class but they were very much like the students and she rarely got good feedback from teachers.

When she turned ten, the head teacher told her father she would need to take another scholarship exam for entrance into the secondary school. She failed it. And she felt like the world had come to an end. How was she going to earn loads of money and look after herself and her dad now?

But an opportunity arose, as it often did. Her father got her into St Trinians. And it was awesome.


	3. Chapter 3 - First Year

At St Trinians, Kelly Jones was the boss. At least, the boss of the first-years. In the first couple of weeks, she proved her authority by wrapping Flash around her little finger, getting in with the Head Girl Jessica and putting herself in charge of business, betting and vodka production.

Taylor liked Kelly. She scared most of the year, but Tay decided that they were going to be mates. And that was what happened. Best mates in no time. Taylor had a lot of willpower, and she wasn't afraid to use it to her advantage.

At first, Andrea didn't have many friends. She felt like she was a bit of an outsider, even with this odd collection of misfits. She wasn't shy, just reserved, and she really didn't feel comfortable approaching a lot of these loud, eccentric girls and starting awkward conversation.

But then, one day, Kel and Tay were pitching their new line of Brandt Quality Vodka and Andrea decided she wanted to give this shit a try herself.

So next week, when Flash turned up again, she strolled up with a neat little cardboard box. "Cigarettes," she grinned, pushing them forward. She'd been working on it all by herself, and nobody had noticed. But then, a lot of the time people didn't tend to notice Andrea whatever she was doing. Flash was pretty impressed. He agreed to flog a load of them and she shook his hand triumphantly.

And from that moment on, Andrea had a lot more respect from everyone. Admirers, almost.

Taylor decided that she was a worthy friend. And it worked out for a while, Kel, Tay and Rea, the three awesome first-years that EVERYONE knew about. But Taylor and Andrea were constantly arguing.

And everything blew up one evening in art. "You can't have BUTTER on a bacon sandwich!" Taylor insisted with disgust in her eyes.

"Yes you can! You need butter on a sandwich! Otherwise it isn't a sandwich!"

"I hate you Andrea!"

Then they didn't talk for days. Occasionally they communicated through Kelly.

Andrea took up painting and poetry. She painted disturbing pictures of Taylor with a knife plunged through her heart, and with her head chopped off. She called it expressive art. And she wrote poems about why Taylor was such an awful person. Haikus, actually.

Taylor is stupid.

She thinks only of herself.

I swear I hate her.

It was the start of a long, long feud between them.

And it made the first-years realise that soon, they wouldn't all be friends anymore. They would be divided in the cliques that made up St Trinians.


	4. Chapter 4 - Decision

The time came to choose their cliques, as they'd all known it would.

For Andrea, it was easy: she was an emo through and through (although at this point it wasn't so obvious on the outside - she lacked the piercings and dramatic eye makeup to come later). She found comfort and a sense of belonging among the like minded emos, their rituals and close knit friendship.

Taylor wasn't as quick to choose. Deep down, she knew that she fitted with the chavs, but she did wonder if she was posh totty material, before those girls dismissed her mockingly. At first she wasn't sure of the label. Yes, she was a chav. It was where she was from and the way she spoke. But should that define who she was and who she befriended? Andrea could go to hell, she was ten times smarter than the funeral queen when she wanted to be. The weariness about her group wore off, though; having the friends she did was amazing. She'd never had many friends, other than Kelly last year.

While Andrea and Taylor had been bitter rivals since that damn argument about the bacon sandwich, it really got extreme in their second year at St Trinian's.

Their cliques were traditionally enemies, and that suited the two of them perfectly. Andrea seeked revenge, Taylor seeked something other than her nails to do.

Neither girl ever hated the other as much as they might make out. Okay, on many occasions, fights had been serious and resulted in serious injury, but it started out as fun, and while she'd never admit it, Taylor grew fond of this medium of attracting Andrea's attention


	5. Chapter 5 - Hobby

Andrea had continued with her paintings from first year. Yes, she was terrible at painting, but she had made moderate improvement through excessive practice.

All the emos did something like this. Something artistic, to express themselves, pour out their souls, that sort of thing. Andrea had tried various different things. It started off with poetry - diabolical free verse about the darkness inside her soul, nothing too original. Then it was playing the violin, but she was not coordinated enough to be musical. Even she could admit that the "music" sounded like a cat being scratched against a whiteboard, or whatever that expression was.

Her clique had a hangout, an abandoned classroom the other side of the school from the dorms and busy parts. Within it, Andrea had a corner. She hung up paintings, mainly black canvases with red paint dripping down like blood, and made new ones. It was quiet and peaceful. Usually.

But on one particular occasion, there was some serious identity theft crime planning going on, which she wasn't in the mood to take part in. Instead she migrated to the art classroom, which was far less preferable, but would do nonetheless.

Rather than sticking with her usual, dripping blood sort of style, she tried something different, a knife and a bottle of pills from observation on the desk in front of her. More difficult, but more original, she guessed.

The thing with the art classroom was that anyone could walk in, and usually someone did. It was particularly bad luck that today it was her least favourite person in the world. She'd been working on the painting for three or four hours when the interruption came in the form of the loud, screeching cackle, aka Taylor Bennett's awful laugh.

"The fuck is that, goth?"

"Emo," Andrea corrected automatically, with no emotion.

"Whatever. But sr'sley, mate, that's matted."

Andrea scowled, but didn't acknowledge the chav with a response.

"You 'ent got no gradience. And the shape o' the pills, unrecognisable," Taylor added. "Here, let me fix it."

Andrea's hand had been clutching the paintbrush forcefully, contemplating whether to throw it or stab Taylor with it. But the chav grabbed her hand, and guided it towards the painting, going over the shit bits and improving it considerably.

That was the first time Andrea felt butterflies at Taylor's touch.


	6. Chapter 6 - Out of Character

Flash was the one who found Andrea there, head buried in hands and silently sobbing to herself. Andrea never cried. But without sounding like she was feeling sorry for herself, she was pretty sure you were allowed to cry when your dad had lung cancer and was predicted to die before the end of the year.

Nobody was supposed to find her. As soon as she'd got the news in the form of a call from her father's doctor, she'd ran straight to the first empty place she could find, a desolate corridor. She'd completely forgotten that Flash was coming tonight, and that there was a lot to talk about in terms of the new packaging for her rapidly growing brand of fags. It had been organised days ago. If she had remembered, she would have held herself together for one more day. Even at fourteen, Andrea was bloody strong. But now she felt broken and useless and purposeless.

When she had heard the sound of footsteps on the creaky wooden floor, Andrea had tried to wipe her eyes and pretend she was just sitting here.

"Andrea! I was looking for you. I was thinking, about the-"

At that point, Flash caught sight of the eye makeup running down her face, ruined by her tears.

"Er... should I... er... how about I go and get-"

"If you tell anyone about this I will personally slice your tongue out and... just... fuck it. Fuck it all. We're all going to die." Her voice was loud, hysterical. Flash probably thought she was going mad. He didn't know her too well, but anyone could tell that this was out of character for Andrea.

Then there were more footsteps to be heard. Andrea let out a loud sob.

"Hey, Flash! Kelly wanted to- holy shit, Morticia, what the hell is wrong with your face?!"

Seeing her more closely, Taylor frowned. She couldn't possibly shoot insults at Andrea in this state. You didn't kick a man when he was down. Trying to awkwardly mime to Flash to go, she stood for a couple of moments before he got the message.

"Alrigh', er, Rea, you, er... good luck?" Taylor shot him a violent glare. "Bye, ladies." He made a hasty retreat. Taylor sighed.

Seeing Andrea like this wasn't just completely unreal, it sort of made her feel angry. And sympathetic. At the same time. Angry because she couldn't do anything to help, angry because she didn't know if she wanted to. And sympathetic because Andrea's face looked like a violence explosion of goth makeup, ruined by water.

So Taylor just took a seat next to her on the windowsill. "What's wrong?" she murmured so quietly it could barely be heard.

In any other state of mind, Andrea would have punched her in the face and sent a stream of angry insults and threats at her. But today, she was out of her mind with worry and she couldn't help the words which came tumbling out of her mouth. And it helped. Telling someone. In between hiccups. It wasn't the ideal person, but Andrea barely noticed it was the chav she'd spent all her school years hating.

Because Taylor listened, and frowned, or held Andrea's hand, at all the right times as she spoke. And when the emo was finished, Taylor pulled her into a tight hug, rubbing her back as she cried.

It was a few minutes before they pulled apart, and Andrea began to regain her senses.

"Uh, thanks," she muttered awkwardly. "But if you go off and tell all your little chav friends about this, I will slit your throat while you sleep." There. Andrea was back.

"Wouldn't dream of it, coffin queen," Taylor quipped as she left with a little wave.

And Andrea headed for the bathroom, to fix the bloody makeup disaster.


	7. Chapter 7 - Grief

Andrea was in her fourth year of St Trinian's. It was the easter holidays. Most of the girls were jetting off on exotic holidays to exotic places. She meanwhile, was in a small hospital room, sitting on an uncomfortable wooden chair and staring at the wall.

They'd thought that her father was doing well, even that there was still a chance that he would live past the end of the year. But then he'd relapsed, and he'd been rushed to hospital.

Andrea spent as long as she could with him every day, although he was usually asleep or too ill to really converse with. On many occasions, fellow emos invited her to meet up. Kelly texted once. But she always denied. She didn't bother with excuses, but she didn't confide in anyone about her father's cancer. They'd just have to deal with rejection on her part. Because what was important was that her father stayed alive, or if not, that she was there with him when he died.

It was boring, a lot. On many occasions nurses came in and tried to get her to leave, or sometimes gave her a book to read. But she didn't. Her attention was solely on her father. After about a day in the hospital, she started talking to him. For several hours a day, she'd talk to him. About random things. Whatever she could think of. Her friends, her artwork, her cigarettes, how much she hated slutty bitchy chavs and when the toaster wasn't working. Sometimes he listened, other times she couldn't be sure whether he even realised she was there.

On Black Friday, at 10:42am, her father died. She held his hand as he drifted away, as the heartbeat monitor went crazy before turning completely still.

Then she screamed and cried, tried to stab the doctor with her house keys.

A social worker came to pick her up and take her of to some care home place. They couldn't restrain her there, either; she was the typical terribly behaved parentless kid, getting into fights and all the rest of it.

Nobody wanted her to stay there. So they decided to ship her back to St Trinian's for the week left of the holidays. At least she'd be left in peace.

The day before she returned, she felt the worst. It was sinking in, that he was gone, and she couldn't get rid of the relentless pain in her chest. She went to get a tattoo of a raven on the back of her neck, determined to distract herself from the mental pain by putting herself through physical pain. It didn't help. If anything, it made it worse.

Andrea took a taxi back to school the next day.


	8. Chapter 8 - Reunited

Having no family to go home to, Taylor stayed at St Trinian's over the two week Easter holidays. But she wasn't bitter. Seriously. She was used to it now, and anyway, the alternative would be spending her time with the freaks at the care home she'd spent a year at. And that was far, far worse.

Many of the girls had enough money to be on fancy holidays, most at least had families to return to. There were four people staying at school over the holidays: Taylor, two first years and a geek a year or so younger than her. So not really anyone to interact with. That meant, as usual, she had to find a way to pass the seemingly endless time. Most people looked forward to school holidays, but they were the worst part of the year. Next holiday, she'd decided, she would be staying with friends or finding somewhere, anywhere, to stay.

Some days she went down to the shops on the high street, but this grew tedious - there were mainly just charity shops, and she had hardly any money to spend. She still had to go and get her regular supply of gum every few days.

The rest of the time she used spending time on fancy expensive laptops (it was easy to bully Mia the geek into handing them over), messing around with makeup and hair products people had left behind and reading (nobody could ever know about that, she literally had nothing else).

A week passed, possibly the slowest and most boring week ever, and by that Sunday, the boredom made her want to kill herself. As she tucked into a cheese sandwich for lunch that day, she was surprised to see the door to the dining room open. Even more surprised to see her public worst enemy walk in casually. Suddenly she seemed to lose her appetite.

"Alright, Little Miss Sunshine?" Taylor asked mockingly, but instantly regretted it. There was nobody of any importance here. Therefore, there was no point fighting with Andrea. As much as she hated to admit it, the emo could beat the shit out of her fairly easily. The only advantage Taylor had was being able to annoy the fuck out of Andrea with words. But that didn't matter now. Not until all the other students returned next week. Now she might as well refrain from ending up in vicious fist fights.

There was no response. Andrea, her face showing no emotion, just walked out of the hall. What was going on with her?

Wait... oh no. Taylor instantly assumed the worst. On that strange, strange night a few weeks ago, Andrea had told her the doctor said her father didn't even have a year. Was that it? Why she'd come back early? No, surely not - nobody who'd just lost their father could keep their face as stony and neutral as Andrea's had been a couple of minutes ago. Taylor gave up on the sandwich.

At midnight that night, Taylor was awoken by a strange muffled sound coming from the other side of the dormitory. Being half asleep, she got up to find whoever it was making that noise and tell them to shut the fuck up and let her sleep. But then she came to the area where the emos slept, and heard it was coming from the bed hidden away in the corne.

Great. Andrea. How the hell was she supposed to deal with that broken, sensitive Andrea that she's met on the night she found out about her dad's situation? In the middle of the night, too.

"Hey... Andrea?"

The noise stopped. Eyes peeked out from under the covers. But still, no no insults, or any words from the emo.

"You know what? Neva mind. I'll find earplugs or summat, yeah?" As she turned to walk away, in the corner of her eye Taylor saw Andrea wipe her eyes and try to calm down. The sight made Taylor herself want to cry. Instead of going back to bed, she took a seat on the bed next to Andrea.

"Is it... is it your dad?" She didn't expect a response, but the girl gave her a small nod as means of saying yes. "I'm sorry. I mean, I know what it's like and that. And ya... you can talk to me any time, yeah?" No response, this time. Taylor went back to bed.


	9. Chapter 9 - Fighting

"Guys, stop!" Kelly yelled. The room went silent and Andrea paused where she was. About to stamp on Taylor's pretty little face with her heavy doc martens. Taylor was on the floor.

This was the most serious fight the two had got into for years. The last time was when Taylor sprained Andrea's wrist so Andrea pulled out a clump of her hair and slammed her head against the wall, back in second year.

Most of their fights seemed pretty serious, but they were usually over trivial things, and it stopped before anyone ended up fatally injured.

Andrea normally provoked the fights by stealing Taylor's nail varnish and such, then the chav would "get all up in her face" and actually start the fight.

But today was different. It was serious.

And Andrea genuinely wanted to kill Taylor with her bare hands. She was determined the girl deserved it, after what she'd had the nerve to do. She had told Chelsea. Chelsea, as in the year's biggest gossip and posh tottie.

After a week spent together, both of them acting civilised, Andrea had been beginning to think that maybe Taylor wasn't so bad after all. Not that she'd stop their public bickering. But now, now the girl had practically called for war.

There was no sense of enjoyment in trying to murder Taylor, as there often was. There was just unadulterated fury, and a burning desire for revenge in the most physical and painful way possible.

Various members of both tribes were watching, encouraging one of the girls. Andrea would have been able to do it, if it wasn't for Kelly coming and ruining it all at the worst possible time.

Kelly was the one in charge of their year. Nobody would deny it. She was perfect head girl material, when the time came in a few years. But Andrea wasn't pleased with her when she interrupted her revenge time. Still filled with more anger than she'd felt in a long time, Andrea barely noticed Kelly grab her arm and yank her off to the dormitory, which was empty at the moment.

"Listen, Kels, I don't want a lecture, I know that-"

"Are you okay?"

Andrea scowled. "Don't pretend like you don't know. Like Chelsea hasn't spread it around the whole school by now."

"Andrea James, can you stop feeling sorry for yourself and bloody listen to me?"

She was surprised by the girl's sudden sharpness and coldness. So she kept her mouth shut.

"I know Taylor made a mistake, but can you stop acting like a child and realise that maybe she can explain herself? Or at least that she doesn't need to get sent to the fucking hospital!"

No, she couldn't, Andrea thought bitterly. Because Taylor did deserve to get shipped off to hospital and feel the pain that Andrea had been feeling. In a sadistic way she imagined putting someone else, someone who had screwed her over completely, through the same pain, would help stop how she felt right now.

"Just keep your distance, okay?" Kelly sighed.

What was she, Andrea's mother?

Andrea kept her distance for the next few hours, but Taylor didn't keep hers. At dinnertime, the third meal Andrea had skipped today, while everyone else was in the dining room, Taylor came up to the dormitory where Andrea was camping out.

At first, the emo didn't notice Taylor's presence. The headphones she had on were blasting My Chemical Romance songs out loud enough that anything happening around her was irrelevant and went unnoticed.

It was only when the song ended and in the couple of seconds as it changed when Andrea noticed the new arrival. She slipped the headphones off.

"What the fuck do you want?" She had to physically squeeze her fists shut tightly to stop herself from trying to hurt Taylor again.

"I came to say sorry an' that," Taylor responded, her voice so low Andrea could only just hear it. "I shouldn't've told Chelsea, it was just that she sort of figured it out by her own. I just confirmed what she thought, ent it?"

Andrea doubted Chelsea was that smart. Anyway, it wasn't at all obvious, right? Other than the way she behaved, the picture of her dad on the wall, and her even more frequent trips to the graveyard, without the rest of her tribe... maybe it was more obvious than she'd thought. And maybe Taylor wasn't entirely to blame. Only mainly to blame.

"If it makes you leave, apology accepted." Not waiting for a response, Andrea put her headphones back on and turned around to face the wall.

Taylor stood up and hesitantly placed a hand which was supposed to be comforting on Andrea's back. From the way the girl reacted, though, with a jump and a death glare, it clearly didn't turn out this way.

Well, Taylor would just have to keep quiet.


End file.
